Barboursville - Merlot Reserve

Price: $20
Region: Virginia
Year: 2008

While I wrote a few weeks about the trip my wife and I recently took to Virgina to visit a couple of wineries, this is the first bottle from that trip that I am reviewing on its own. We actually opened this a few Saturdays ago to have with some pizza we were having for dinner. It was a pretty laid back Saturday evening, so the two of us sat down to enjoy a bottle of wine. Since we only brought back about 6 bottles of wines from the wineries we visited, we were hoping that we did a decent enough job of picking out the ones we liked best, but this was the firs test of how well we actually ended up doing.

From the very beginning, I was pretty sure I was going to have to throw out any of the biases I was going to have based on my relative familiarity with California Merlots. The color of this wine was somewhere in between a Cab and a Merlot. It had good clarity, but not overly dark in appearance. The aroma was a bit faint, so I had to give the wine a couple of swirls and subsequent sniffs to get a good smell, and my general impression was one of flowers, but again, a little light. As I took a sip, the flavor was consistent, with the fruit flavor standing out (I would lean toward cherries), but in line with the faint aroma, the wine just felt a little young to me. The wine was just a touch tart, but overall, it was very unique, especially for a Merlot. It is definitely not a wine you would compare to a California Merlot, but it really was a good change of pace. You can obviously find a pretty solid bottle of wine for $20, but would still recommend grabbing a bottle if you happen to be visiting the Barboursville Winery.

Rating: 3.25 corks (Different, but good)